The Signs
by Sheep
Summary: Watanuki picks up some extra things on the way home from grocery shopping one day, sealing his and Yuko's place in an epic story. In doing this, he sets off the beginning of a journey that doesn't span just worlds, but realities and realms...


Disclaimer: xxxHoLic and all its affiliates are property of the artists known as CLAMP.

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"Why… Why… WHY?!"

Kimihiro Watanuki stomped down the backstreets of Tokyo with several grocery bags in hand. It was already quite late in the afternoon and his employer, Yuko Ichihara, had ordered him to go out and buy fresh groceries for dinner that night. Unfortunately for Watanuki, her shopping list was over two pages long and she sent no help with him.

"Why does Yuko-san always have to wait until the very last minute to get food for me to cook with?" grumbled Watanuki as he pushed his glasses back up to his blue eyes. "On top of all that, she has to send me to places that are practically on the other side of the city from the shop!"

Yuko had been away for some time and had just returned when Watanuki was sent on his errand. Complaining loudly as usual when she told him, he asked her why she didn't say anything before she left.

"I told you I was going out for a while," she had said, draped over her plush couch and sipping a glass of amber rum on ice, "and I told you before that we were running low on food, didn't I? So it's your own fault for not realizing that you should've gone out to get more food!"

"How's a guy supposed to know what to buy, huh?" Watanuki had shot back at her as he took off his cleaning apron. "It's not good to buy some food without having some general idea of what to cook or else it'll all go to waste!"

The tall, beautiful and curvy shopkeeper got up from her couch and stroked Watanuki's chin, smiling.

"You always cook the best things, no matter what it's made of, dear Watanuki," she purred.

"Thank you, Yuko-san, but you're not fooling me," he said with a glare.

"You see right through me," she giggled and clapped her hands with a smile. "Maru, Moro? The shopping list for Watanuki, please!"

The two soulless child helpers of Yuko's came bounding into the room with a small booklet that comprised the shopping list for the day.

"The shopping list…" chirped Maru.

"For Watanuki!" Moro finished as the both held it up to Watanuki.

"THAT'S the shopping list? It's HUGE! Yuko-san! How am I supposed to carry all this back to the shop by myself?"

"Oh, I'm sure you'll find a way!" Yuko just gave him her amused, all-knowing and smug smile. She then shooed her employee out with Maru and Moro pushing him out the door as the little black round creature named Mokona bounced to his shoulder. "Now, GO! And take Mokona with you."

Still walking on the streets with several bags on each hand, Watanuki heaved a heavy sigh and trudged his feet along the ground. "Why me…?"

"C'mon, Watanuki!" Mokona cheered him on from within one of the grocery bags. "The faster we get back to Yuko's, the faster we get to enjoy this liquor!"

"You're no help, you black pork bun!" He yelled into his bag.

The sun was just beginning to touch the horizon, making the entire neighbourhood bask in its warm red and orange glow. Normally, with Watanuki's tendency to attract unwanted and hungry spirits to him, he would be rushing to get back to the shop because of the incoming darkness looming ahead with a full moon. But, with Mokona by his side, he knew he could take his time. Shiri-tori would be easy to start between them both if anything happened.

A distant howl of a wolf reached his ears.

"Hmm?"

He stopped in the street and looked around. The street was deserted and no sign of life was in sight except for the trees in residential yards and a squirrel scurrying along a brick wall. No wolf.

"Mokona?" Watanuki continued on his way and shook the bag a bit to get the black pork bun's attention. "Did you hear that?"

Mokona leaned out of the bag and looked around as well, nodding. "Mokona heard it too. You're not imagining things…"

As they made their way back, Watanuki passed through a small park and noticed something strange that made him stop and look.

An arrow made of a rich but pale wood and fletched with green feathers stuck out from the trunk of a tree. It had gone through a small gold ring, which was hanging on the arrowhead against the tree. Watanuki set down the grocery bags near it and managed to pull it out.

The ring was a plain golden band with nothing special to identify it except for its small size. It looked like it would be able to fit a small woman's or a child's finger.

The arrow was incredibly light, slender and made of an extraordinarily strong, supple wood that ended in an elegantly curved arrowhead. The fletching shone a rich insipid green in the setting sunlight.

He could feel a strange sense of honour, loyalty and strength emanating from the arrow through his hand while the ring sent feelings of subtle despair, relief from evil and obsession but with a different quality of strength than the arrow.

With his right eye, he could see that they were part of something special. Something deep inside him was calling him to bring them back to the shop so he figured that Yuko would know what to do with them and put them in the bag with Mokona.

Mokona slowly climbed into another bag, away from the arrow and the ring while Watanuki continued away, not noticing that his companion had moved.

"Watanuki…" Mokona looked up with him, voice quivering. "We should get home faster!"

Watanuki nodded and picked up the pace. He could feel it too. Something was in the air that made him very uncomfortable but something on the ground ahead of him made him stop in the middle of the street once more. Something that was glittering in the dying sunlight…

As he came up to it, he saw that it was a small coin. Stopping and setting down the bags once again, he picked up and turned it over in his hands.

A small gold coin, clearly not Japanese or of any other Asian make, shone in his hand. A skull with markings as if the skull was the sun was etched into one side and a strange square spiral with a circle next to it etched into the other. Flicking it between his thumb and forefinger, he flipped it into the air and heard it ring.

"… _Hoist the colours high…_"

Watanuki gasped and grabbed the coin from the air. He could swear that the singing had come directly from the coin itself! Hastily, he tossed it into the grocery bag along with the arrow and the ring and continued on his way, walking as fast as he could with his load.

"Yuko has to know something about this," he muttered under his breath. "I can't see any spirits around but something weird is going on!"

A wolf's howl rang through the evening air again as clouds gathered in the sky. A different bestial roar answered from the trees with the sounds of sharp hard metal sliding across more metal, like butchers' knives rubbing against each other to sharpen each other.

At this point, Watanuki broke out into a run through the deserted streets of Tokyo. He knew that Yuko's shop was coming near and that her wards would soon protect them both from what was coming at them.

The sound of bark being cut by strong blades was heard up ahead of them but Watanuki couldn't turn away from his path even though he was scared to even run down past the cut tree.

"Watanuki, look!" Mokona pointed out of the bag to the torn tree up ahead.

He slowed, panting, and looked at the giant X that was carved aggressively into the trunk of the tree. Eyes widening, Watanuki could see and feel the rage, frustration and the desperation that was hidden in that X that it sent chills down his spine.

"That thing feels just like the others…" Watanuki said out loud. "Maybe this is something like what Yuko-san had said before about different worlds."

"We should go back, Watanuki," Mokona called up to him again, head popped out of the bag and looking at the X as well. "It's getting late and it's starting to rain, too."

Rushing through the falling droplets, Watanuki asked, "Mokona, do you feel it, too?"

The little black creature nodded. "Mokona feels it too… Something big is happening. I think Yuko's waiting for us, too. But that might be because she wants her liquor!"

"How could you be so nonchalant about this?!"

"Look! A ribbon!"

A tattered red-pink ribbon drifted lazily in the wind and dropped to the ground as the raindrops gave it weight, gluing it to the stone walk while a wolf's howl echoed through the air once more, creating a quiet feeling of past regrets and renewed determination.

As he passed by, Mokona reached out and picked it up, quickly slipping it into the bag with the rest of the relics. Watanuki didn't object to what Mokona would pick up randomly during their outings since he knew that there was usually a good, if largely unknown, reason.

Just as Watanuki was about to step into past the wards in the fence, it started to rain heavily and lightning flashed across the sky. Between the buildings around Yuko's store, two lightning bolts flashed simultaneously.

One flashed a vivid green bolt that raked across the sky in the classical fashion but the other arched through the clouds in a shape reminiscent of a huge white dragon that roared with thunder with the green lightning.

"What the hell…?" Watanuki looked at the sky in confusion before going inside.

"He's back, he's back!" Maru and Moro cheered in unison. "Watanuki's back!" But they froze in the middle of their dance and their faces slacked into a slight daze when they looked at him while he took off his shoes. They called back into the store, "Mistress, Watanuki brought back something more."

"Eh?"

There was nothing Watanuki could do except let Maru and Moro take in all the grocery bags except for the one with the relics in them while Mokona bounced from the bag to the veranda where Yuko was currently staying. He picked up the last bag and went to her, becoming more and more confused and perplexed.

"Yuko-san…?" Watanuki hesitantly made his presence known behind her.

"Set the bag here, Watanuki," Yuko replied calmly, pipe in hand and Mokona already taking some of the sake beside her. She didn't even turn back as she continued, "Dry off and bring some snacks and tea for me, will you?"

"O-okay."

He set down the bag behind her and did as she told him to. After drying off thoroughly, changing into a spare set of clothes he kept with her, putting away the groceries and making the snacks and tea for her, he went back and sat down on the floorboards behind Yuko.

Dressed provocatively as usual, Yuko rested her head on her hand propped on her knee, draped elegantly in a long flared dress with butterfly decals at the bottom with a rather high slit and thin straps. She exhaled a thin stream of smoke with the pipe in her propped hand, the other arm crossed over her knees.

Watanuki sat there quietly, listening to the rainfall and the thunder rumble. He looked down and saw the arrow, ring, coin and ribbon out of the bag and next to Yuko.

"Umm… Yuko-san," he began quietly, "I'm sorry. I didn't know I wasn't supposed to…"

"You have nothing to apologize for, Watanuki," she interrupted. She finally made eye contact with him and smiled. "In fact, I should be thanking you for bringing these. So you really shouldn't be sitting so far away from me like I'm a plague or something of that bad sort."

"Ah! Sorry!" Watanuki sat closer and put his legs over the veranda like her. "What are they, anyway?"

"They're signs," Yuko said, setting down her pipe and taking the ring in her hand. "Precious symbols of certain people who will be travelling to this place."

"Like Syaroan and his group, you mean? But they didn't come with a sign like this, did they? I mean… This means that these travellers are different. Right?"

"Very different," she agreed, "So different, in fact, that they're not even from our web of worlds. One might be, but from a very distant world in our web."

Watanuki looked at her blankly as he always did when he had no idea what she was talking about or when he did understand but it made him incredibly confused. He said to reinforce his confusion to Yuko, "I can understand the words but can you try to string them together so that they make sense to me?"

"You've heard of Chobits, haven't you?"

"Sure. They're persocoms in the popular manga around here. Himawari-chan says it's a really cute story," he added with a big smile.

"Well, to you and Himawari-chan, Chobits is a good story, a fiction. But somewhere in our web of worlds, Hideki-san and Chi-san are actually living out their lives in reality. Elsewhere in the web and even to other webs, they're a legend while some webs don't even know about them.

"But above all that, there are parallel worlds where they have different selves. And in those worlds, they live very different lives. So different, in fact, that one could call them completely different stories; completely different fictions."

Watanuki watched the raindrops splatter onto the leaves in the garden while his mind processed what he was hearing. Wisps of smoke from Yuko's now empty pipe still lingered around his head.

Working in her shop exposed him to no end of spiritual and paranormal things, not to mention a copious amount of alcohol and hard manual work. This was also added onto his special gift of being able to see and attract spirits, so he was used to strange life-threatening things that most other people didn't have to deal with. But the things that Yuko was saying somehow filled him with a sense of dread as he glanced at the strange relics between them.

"But, Yuko-san," he began, "that means that stories that people make up are actually real. Does that mean that our thoughts control other people in other worlds?"

Yuko looked out pensively at the curtains of rain and thought of how she wanted to tell Watanuki so he'd understand easily.

"Not exactly," she said, pushing the snacks and tea to him while munching on some herself, "It's the human imagination that affects us all. For a person in the right world, an imagination powerful enough in a different world could create a fiction that changes a person's life entirely and simply because it would be reality for them. Of course, there are a few cases where a person's entire life is governed by the imagination of a single author but fuelled into reality by the huge amount of fans that read it.

"Sometimes new stories of the original world that aren't 'official' are made by the fans. Usually, the individual stories have no effect on the characters but with the sheer numbers of these stories…"

"So the sum of the power of these stories turned out to be more powerful than anybody ever imagined."

Yuko nodded and ate a piece of nori cracker. "It created an entirely new realm, completely parallel to the 'official' webs of worlds but without the complete set of rules that the 'official' webs have to comply by.

"One could say that it's a realm created by fans who unleash their imaginations."

Watanuki's eyes widened and looked at her in shock. "You mean, it's…!"

"Yes. And it's that realm that's being threatened by corrupt forces right now. It's that realm that sent those signs and it's that realm who's asking for our help."

"Are we going to help, Yuko-san?"

She looked at him, meeting his eyes. He knew that behind her youthful looks laid vast volumes of knowledge and immense magical powers that were unknown to most other people. Often, like this time, he felt like her ruby eyes were drilling to his soul, examining and assessing the quality of what was inside him.

"What do you think, Watanuki?"

He looked at her, a bit shocked. "Well… it does sound really serious, if it has you worried about it." He looked down, thinking. "And it sounds like a lot of people could get hurt if nothing's done about it."

Yuko kept looking at him, watching how his expressions changed as his mind raced until absolute determination had set across his face.

"I think we should help." He looked at her straight in the eye. "If there's anything we can do to keep that realm from harm, we should do it, no matter how small our efforts are. There's just too many lives at stake and too many lives that would be affected if we didn't."

Yuko gave him a genuine smile and praised him, "Good choice, Watanuki."

He smiled shyly and flushed.

"But you would've had to do it anyway," she said with a mischievous smile and chortled at him.

"WHAT!"

"I've already made a lot of preparations for this while I was away, dear Watanuki! And you sealed the deal by seeing all those signs and bringing these lovely treasures home. So even if you didn't want to," she said with a wide grin and poked his nose, "You'd still have to do it since you're still under my employment!"

"Then why did you ask me?" Watanuki growled at her.

"Because it's just so fun!" Yuko giggled. "Now, get on preparing the food for our guests! They're probably going to be arriving tomorrow. You'll find the recipes in the kitchen."

"Why do you always do that?" He ranted as he got up and headed inside. "You always give me choices to make that are already decided for me! I can't believe you sometimes, Yuko-san! What's a guy to do in times like this…?"

"Oh, Watanuki?"

"Yes?" He looked back at her, thoroughly annoyed.

"What else did you see or hear aside from these treasures?"

"Oh, umm…" He thought back, trying to remember what he saw on his journey back to the store and counted them off his fingers. "First I saw the arrow in the ring… Then it was the singing coin…"

Yuko's eyes narrowed slightly at him. "What did it sing?"

"I think it sang something like 'Hoist the colours'. Let's see… Ah! Something that sounded like knives and a beast at the same time had carved a giant X in the trunk of a tree. Then Mokona picked up the ribbon while a wolf howled a second time… Then when I got back here, I saw a couple of lightning bolts between the buildings before I stepped through the wards. One was a bright green and the other looked like a dragon."

"I see… Thank you, Watanuki."

"You're welcome," he replied as he went back in, glancing back at Yuko once before starting to cook with the recipes he was provided with.

Yuko's magic swirled around her as she kept a quiet watch over the crying skies. Her thoughts gathered around the oncoming task and she summoned the letter in its original envelope into her hands that warned her of the dangers that were coming to her shop.

The top left corner, which bore the supposed return address, carried only a single word with a phrase under it…

Fanfiction 

_Unleash Your Imagination…_

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Disclaimer: Fanfiction is not my property. It's a concept. Nobody owns a concept. A concept could have a founder but I'm clearly not the founder of fanfiction.

A/N: Yes, this is a crossover fic of sorts! This fic itself is going to be really short… Probably only about 3 chapters maximum since this is really just the introduction to a big net of fics I want to write. I'll be jumping around the different fic worlds with the fics like actual chapters of a giant story, so watch out for that!!

Can you guess which characters I picked and from which world?

Reviews would be much appreciated!!


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